It’s a great honor and pleasure for me to welcome Larry Downes to the TLF. Larry coined the term “Killer App” in his 1998 book, Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance. He’s written a few great pieces for CNET recently. And you can find our more about him at his website.
His latest book, The Laws of Disruption, was a rare bright spot in a decade of terrible books about technology and revived a venerable tradition of dynamist classics, including his previous book as well as Clayton Christensen’s 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail and Virginia Postrel’s 1999 The Future and its Enemies. The Laws of Disruption expresses both optimism about the capacity of ongoing disruptive innovation to improve our lives and a healthy skepticism about regulation—as Adam noted in his 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 review.
Larry’s taught technology law (Northwestern) and business (Chicago, UC-Berkeley) over the years and is currently a nonresident Fellow with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society. He’s a terrifically nice guy, a great writer, and a welcome ally in the fight for cyber-freedom.